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We are trying to get a pre-existing ruby on rails site up and running
(we just got these files sent to us).
We are new to ruby so we have a new install (we're running 1.8.6,
patch level 0).
We have already had to update the code in this app from 'require_gem'
to 'gem' and now we are getting variable not initialized errors. We're
thinking we're running a different version of Ruby than where this
site was hosted before....
Was there a previous ruby version that was by default was loose and
allowed you 'spring to life' variables? Is there a way to tell ruby to
be loose about its variable declaration?
thanks for the help.

What are the warnings that you're receiving? It's probable that
you're running ruby with the -w switch on. Rails wasn't written to be
-w clean, so make sure you take that switch off. If you can't control
the command line switch, you can force it by setting $VERBOSE to nil
or false in your config/environment.rb.

SuperRunt wrote:
>> Was there a previous ruby version that was by default was loose and> allowed you 'spring to life' variables? Is there a way to tell ruby to> be loose about its variable declaration?http://groups.google.ca/group/rubyonrails-talk/bro...
In short:
require_gem was used to both define a version of a gem and require it.
This is now deprecated.
To define the version of a gem you use 'gem'.
To actually require the file you need to use 'require'.
If you want the latest version 'require' will be enough.
Stefan